Materia: Mary J. Weismantel & Sandra Gamarra

materia’s third and last event of the Fall quarter 2021 took place on November 16, 2021 via Zoom featuring Mary J. Weismantel (Anthropology, Northwestern University) and Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra. Our guest speakers discussed Weismantel's new book, Playing with Things: Engaging the Moche Sex Pots (University of Texas Press, 2021) in connection with Gamarra's artistic work on Indigenous objects.materia is a DLCL Focal Group on anthropodecentric thinking. Since 2014, the group has served as a platform for graduate and faculty research. Our meetings combine reading discussion, student presentations, and guest speakers. Regular workshop meetings include some twenty-five participants from ILAC and Comp Lit (the pillars of the group), as well as from English, MTL, German, Anthropology, and Music, among others. We collaborate with several other groups on campus and correspond with similar projects in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Cognate courses, as well as completed and ongoing dissertation projects, speak to the continuing impact of the group.

Session formats alternate to include discussions of readings moderated by faculty and graduate students, presentations of works-in-progress, and talks by guest speakers. All readings will be pre-distributed by email and are available to download from our website, materia.stanford.edu.

For more information, please contact Romina Wainberg at rwain [at] stanford.edu (rwain[at]stanford[dot]edu).